View full sizeAbout 35 percent of prisoners released from Alabama prisons, like Holman Correctional Facility (above) in 2004 returned within 3 years. (Department of Corrections Photo)

Some 35 percent of the 10,880 state inmates who got out of prison in Alabama in 2004 returned within 3 years, a rate that was virtually unchanged from the 3-year period between 1999 and 2002, according to a study released Tuesday.

Although the recidivism rate has remained unchanged, Alabama had the 15th-lowest rate of the 41 states that reported data, according to the study by the Pew Center on the States.

Researchers billed it as the first-ever state-by-state examination of return-to-prison rates. Read the report.

Nationally, the recidivism rate between 2004 and 2007 was 43 percent, compared with 45 percent in the 1999-2002 period.

“That’s the same it’s been for the past 30 years or so,” said Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project. “Prison spending has escalated enormously over that period, over the past 30 years, but with barely noticeable impact on the rate of offenders returning to prison.”

The study showed that the recidivism rate varied wildly among the states. For instance, 44.7 percent of prisoners released in Alaska in 2004 had returned within 3 years. That was the highest rate in the country.

The lowest rate was in Montana, where only 4.7 percent of prisoners returned by 2007.

Big savings possible

Gelb said some states could realize big savings with even modest reductions in the numbers of ex-cons returning to prison. The study suggests a 10 percent reduction nationwide would translate into a savings of $635 million in incarceration costs in one year for the states that reported data from 2004-07.

Gelb said a number of states have seen encouraging results by adopting “evidence-based practices” that emphasize incentives both to offenders and the parole and probation agencies that supervise them.

“What we’re seeing is a triumph of science over sound bites,” he said.

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb said she believes the state’s return-to-prison rate will improve with the expansion of drug court programs, which provide treatment in lieu of prison for some defendants. Nearly every county now has one, she said.

“As they go through drug court, data show, there is a significant reduction in recidivism,” she said. “Drug courts work. The data show that drug courts save millions of dollars and make people safer.”

Cynthia Dillard, the executive director of the Alabama Board of Pardons & Paroles, said the revocation rate of parolees during that period was 22 percent.

Legislation backed by Cobb and Dillard that the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take up today would grant early release to nonviolent inmates but require that they be supervised by parole and probation officers.

If ex-cons have drug tests and regular visits from a parole officer, Dillard said, “They’re far more likely to be successful.”